Ridge cap and hip cap shingles are commonly used by roofers to cover the ridges and/or hips of a residential roof. Such shingles overlap one another along a ridge or hip and help shed water away from the ridge or cap. One type of ridge and hip cap shingle is the so-called bullnose ridge and hip cap shingle. Bullnose shingles generally are characterized by an exposed edge that is thicker than normal to give the appearance of texture, thickness, and depth along the ridges and hips of a roof. Prior art bullnose ridge and hip shingles have suffered from a variety of shortcomings inherent in their respective designs. For example, some prior art ridge and hip cap shingles obtain a thicker exposed edge simply by stacking and gluing together two or three layers of shingle material along the exposed edges. This is undesirable for a number of reasons, including the resulting raw edges of shingle material that are considered unsightly by some, the difficulty of manufacturing requiring additional special steps to stack shingle material at the edges, and the excessive use of shingle material. Other prior art bullnose ridge and hip shingles are foldable to form a multi-layer exposed edge, but these shingles are prone to cracking at their edges, particularly in cold or other extreme weather environments, due to the stress at the folds. In addition, these prior art folded ridge and hip cap shingles can be difficult to install in a reliable and repeatable way along the ridges and hips of a roof.
A need exists for a foldable ridge and hip cap shingle that makes efficient use of shingle material, that does not tend to crack along its folded edges in extreme weather, and that is virtually fool proof to erect and install along a ridge or hip of a roof. It is to the provision of such a ridge and hip cap shingle that the present invention is primarily directed.